Baby Boomer Politics and Southeast Asian History/Studies

When people write about the history of Southeast Asian Studies (or the history of scholarship on Southeast Asian history), they often state that there were biases in the work of colonial-era scholars (Euro-centric, paternalistic, etc.), but similar characterizations are not made about scholarship produced during the period of area studies (1960s-the present).

In fact, there have been clear biases in area studies scholarship pertaining to Southeast Asian history and that is the topic that this video addresses.

Southeast Asian Studies, Orientalism, Decolonization, Baby Boomer Politics & Sympathetic Essentialism

This video continues the conversation started in the previous post about Southeast Asian Studies. We start by talking about the article “Can There Be Southeast Asians in Southeast Asian Studies?” by Ariel Heryanto and then move on to talk about Orientalism, Decolonization, Baby Boomer Politics and Sympathetic Essentialism.